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Both his ear buds popped out of his ears and bounced to the couch he was sitting on, leaving him to glare at me.
I cleared my throat. “As I was saying.”
“You threw a goddamn pillow at my head.”
“And you weren’t responding.”
“You could’ve got up and tapped my shoulder like a normal person. What if I was in the middle of a thought?”
“You’ve typed like twelve words in the last hour. I thought it was reasonably safe to interrupt you.”
“You were watching me?” he asked.
“You’re sitting in my view. Like a statue. It’s pretty easy to see if you’re typing or not.”
“Can we skip the bickering? What did you want?”
“I want to talk about this,” I said, jerking my finger between us vaguely. “We keep skirting around it, ignoring it, and acting like if we shove it in the corner, it’ll go away. But I’m tired of avoiding everything. Let’s just get it all out on the table.”
“Which is it, Kenzie? No strings, or lots of strings? Because you seem to have a really hard time with the concept.”
My mouth had been open and I was about to speak, but it snapped shut. Fucking asshole.
Sebastian stared, fury blazing in his eyes. Why was he so mad?
“You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” he asked. “We fucked again. Now maybe we can go back to acting like adults who give half a shit about our work. Because I have a book to write, a publisher breathing down my neck, and a few million fucking people who make a daily habit of tearing me a new one for taking so long.”
I swallowed. That was more than he’d ever let on about the stress he felt. Worse, it reminded me I was part of those “million fucking people.” I was actually one of the worst because of my blog posts. It was only a minor consolation that I hadn’t made a new post since all the craziness after the book signing happened.
“I could help,” I said. “I mean if you’re stuck. I could help you brainstorm. I’ve read Embers a bunch of times, and I know I’ve wasted way too much time digging into fan theories about what was going to come next. If you’d just talk to me about it we could—”
“There is no ‘we,’” Sebastian’s voice was flat and his eyes were like blue flames. “You said it yourself. I said it four months ago. It’s time we both start living by it. What we did was just sex. We’re not friends. We’re not anything. You’re just tagging along and I’m trying to do some fucking work.” He popped his earbuds back in and glared down at his screen.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was skirting the line between screaming at him and breaking down crying. I got up as calmly as I could and walked past him to leave the room. I paused beside him. Part of me wanted to slap him across the face, but I settled for something more petty. I reached out, snapping his laptop shut. I flashed him the middle finger and then left the room.
Asshole.
24
Sebastian
Kenzie and I barely spoke for the rest of the day. She spent hours on the patio overlooking the valley with her laptop, typing away.
I took a few more trips to the kitchen than I normally would, partly to make sure Reggie wasn’t creeping around her and partly to make sure she wasn’t running off. Kenzie was one of the most impulsive people I’d ever met. It wouldn’t shock me if she hiked to the nearest airport and left without warning.
Naturally, I felt like the world’s biggest idiot. I was the one who kept pushing her away when she tried to get close. But I didn’t want to let her go, either. So what did I want? Did I want her to linger in the background of my life forever so I could harvest whatever voodoo was letting me write for the first time in months? Did I just want more time to figure things out?
It was ridiculous. I needed to let her go.
Astaire seemed to appear out of thin air beside me while I spent more time looking out the patio windows at Kenzie than I did making my sandwich.
“Writing like you do works up quite the appetite, huh?” she asked.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s just that you spend a lot of time up here grabbing snacks. I think this is the fourth dinner I’ve seen you make. Not judging, obviously. You clearly know how to stay in shape and all. I just wondered if it’s some writer’s secret.” She gave a little shrug. “I could record a video if you’d be more comfortable talking about it that way.” She was already lifting her jewel-encrusted phone to point at my face.
I lifted my hand. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to your phone. And there’s no secret.”
